This Side of Jordan - gebrauchtes Buch

Monte Schulz's prose novel opens in the spring of 1929, as the 19-year-old consumptive farm boy Alvin Pendergast attends an ill-fated dance marathon he's too sickly to participate in. After a year of his life has been stolen by a sanitarium, Alvin knows he's relapsing, and dreads not only the drudgery of his family's homestead, but a return to the hospital. In this state of mind, an invitation for a late-night slice of pie is too seductive to pass up and before he knows it, Alvin crosses the Mississippi River and finds himself working for a slick con artist named Chester Burke. Alvin is no match for Chester, who's not merely a con man, but a gangster from Chicago, following the bootleg liquor trade through the small towns of America's middle border. With Alvin in tow, Chester's insouciant disregard for life serves him well as he embarks upon a series of bank robberies and senseless murders. All summer long, Chester assumes the role of a dark angel on Judgment day, cleansing the scrolls of those whose sad fortune had drawn them across his path. Too ill to flee, too morally weak to object, Alvin resigns himself to what seems like certain doom somewhere down the road. Fortunately, Alvin finds another companion on his journey, a lonely, eccentric, and grandiloquent dwarf named Rascal, whose own infirmity binds his and the farm boy's destiny together. Drawn deeper and deeper into Chester's murderous frolic, they come across a curious assortment of characters, from small town businessmen and religious kooks to wayward girls and dance contestants, spiritualists and sideshow freaks. Caught between Chester's villainy and Alvin's own physical deterioration, the young farm boy must make a decision: stick with Chester, who would surely kill him at the slightest hint of betrayal, or muster the courage to stake his life on faith in Rascal's clever plan to save them both. Tired of being afraid, Alvin finally grasps the need not only to outwit the gangster but to find another road to travel. What he discovers about the meaning of home offers a solution to escape and freedom. This Side of Jordan is a thoroughly American novel told in the voice of a lost generation hurtling toward the Great Depression, and evokes a long ago America of crowded Main Streets and tourist camps, miles of cornfields, rural church es, and musty parlors. It ends on the fairgrounds of a traveling wagon circus that beckons gangster, farm boy, and dwarf toward a startling resolution, and a hard-fought absolution for the two young, frightened collaborators. The narrative of this novel has the momentum of a freight train, but told in the seductive, rhythmic tradition of Southern lyricism reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor and Truman Capote, and filled with vivid, outsized literary characters. If Jim Thompson and Carson McCullers went on a collaborative bender by kidnapping Holden Caulfield, Perry Smith, and Ignatius J. Reilly, they'd have come up with something like This Side of Jordan. This Side of Jordan Schulz, Monte, Fantagraphics Books

Monte Schulz:

A seductive novel of southern lyricism. Monte Schulz's prose novel opens in the spring of 1929, as the 19-year-old consumptive farm boy Alvin Pendergast attends an ill-fated dance marathon he's too sickly to participate in. After a year of his life has been stolen by a sanitarium, Alvin knows he's relapsing, and dreads not only the drudgery of his family's homestead, but a return to the hospital. In this state of mind, an invitation for a late-night slice of pie is too seductive to pass up and before he knows it, Alvin crosses the Mississippi River and finds himself working for a slick con artist named Chester Burke. Alvin is no match for Chester, who's not merely a con man, but a gangster from Chicago, following the bootleg liquor trade through the small towns of America's middle border. With Alvin in tow, Chester's insouciant disregard for life serves him well as he embarks upon a series of bank robberies and senseless murders. All summer long, Chester assumes the role of a dark angel on Judgment day, cleansing the scrolls of those whose sad fortune had drawn them across his path. Too ill to flee, too morally weak to object, Alvin resigns himself to what seems like certain doom somewhere down the road. Fortunately, Alvin finds another companion on his journey, a lonely, eccentric, and grandiloquent dwarf named Rascal, whose own infirmity binds his and the farm boy's destiny together. Drawn deeper and deeper into Chester's murderous frolic comics and graphic novels,fantagraphics,graphic novels,literary,literature and fiction,publishers Graphic Novels, Fantagraphics

[EAN: 9781606992968], Gebraucht, wie neu, [PU: Fantagraphics Books, Seattle WA], FICTION, Book Description:Fantagraphics Books, Seattle WA, 2009. Hardc Cover . Book Condition: AA prisitne new copy that looks as if it just came from the publisher. The book is in an archival Brodart book cover. It's the summer before the great stock market crash of '29, and nineteen-year-old Alvin Pendergast is sick of living on a farm, so it's not surprising when he decides to accept a job offer from slick-talking, well-dressed stranger, Chester Burke. But beneath Burke's charming exterior, is a dangerous gangster and a sociopathic killer. Wide-eyed and naive Alvin is in for a bumpy ride. Luckily, he is soon joined by a curious and clever dwarf who will help him navigate the dangerous path. Monte Schulz's novel 'This Side of Jordan' is a colorful and scintillating tale of laced with eccentric characters, 1920s flavor, mayham, merriment, violence, and hope.Bookseller Inventory #

A seductive novel of Southern lyricism, This Side of Jordan opens in the spring of 1929. Nineteen-year-old Alvin Pendergast dreads the drudgery of his family's homestead and, looking for a diversion, finds himself drawn into a life of crime.

Schulz, Monte

Titel:

This Side of Jordan

ISBN-Nummer:

9781606992968

A seductive novel of Southern lyricism, "This Side of Jordan" opens in the spring of 1929. Nineteen-year-old Alvin Pendergast dreads the drudgery of his family's homestead and, looking for a diversion, finds himself drawn into a life of crime.